Stuff

This morning’s YouGov poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 33%, LAB 42%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 7%. It follows another nine point lead yesterday. While it isn’t definite (the figures have a horrible habit of proving me wrong the moment I suggest something may be a meaningful trend, and the underlying lead could still be about 7 or 8 points, with these just normal variation on the high side), but it is looking as if the Conservative referendum bounce is fading already.

I expect this will be the last one of these for a few years, as the Commons looks likely to vote to approve the Lords amendment abandoning the current boundary review and setting the next boundary review to begin in 2015, reporting in September-October 2018. Today should see an end to matters one way or the other – looking in detail at the amendments before the House today, the government has tabled a counter amendment that would reject the Lords amendment, and adopt the Boundary Commissions final recommendations without the need for further votes in the Commons and Lords.

We had the monthly ComRes online poll yesterday, today we have their monthly telephone poll for the Independent. Topline figures here are CON 32%(+1), LAB 39%(-2), LDEM 10%(nc), UKIP 10%(+1). The changes are all well within the margin of error so are not meaningful in themselves, but it is in line with the weekend polls showing a drop in the Labour lead.

The first poll conducted after Cameron’s Europe speech, YouGov’s on Friday, didn’t appear to show any impact on voting intention. However, this weekend we have a further four polls conducted after the speech (the Opinium one was mostly done prior to the speech). Here they are:

Angus Reid/Sunday Express have the Conservatives on 30% (up three) and Labour on 39% (down three) – the online version of the article doesn’t mention the UKIP or Lib Dem scores. The poll was conducted on Thursday and Friday.

ComRes/IoS/Sunday Mirror has the Conservatives up 5 on 33%, Labour unchanged on 39%, UKIP down 4 points on 10%. As I wrote yesterday, some of this appears to be due to ComRes treating likelihood to vote differently in their December poll, but even with consistent treatment of likelihood to vote the poll would have shown the Conservatives up 4 or 5 points, though it would probably also have shown Labour down slightly.

Survation/Mail on Sunday has the Conservatives on 31%, up two, Labour unchanged on 38% and UKIP down two on 14%.

YouGov in the Sunday Times has topline figures of CON 35%, LAB 41%, LDEM 12%, UKIP 7%. Compared to the average of YouGov’s polls last week that equates to the Conservatives being up by about two, Labour down by about two and UKIP down by about one.

In each individual poll the changes are relatively small, but they are consistent across the pollsters, so we can be fairly confident that the Conservatives have enjoyed a small boost from the referendum promise and the positive publicity around it. UKIP appear to have dropped slightly, but not massively (the biggest drop they had, that in the ComRes poll, was mostly due to methodological variation). The shift is hardly a game changing degree though.

Looking at the other questions, there is some stark variation in how people say they’d vote in an EU referendum. YouGov’s figures are very similar to what they were showing early in the week – in a straight referendum question 37% say they would vote to stay, 39% say they would vote to leave. If David Cameron were to renegotiate and recommend a yes vote then 50% of people say they would vote to stay, compared to 25% who would vote to leave – the contrast is almost entirely down to Conservative voters, who would currently vote to leave, but would vote to stay on renegotiated terms.

Angus Reid asked how people would vote if Cameron did manage to repatriate some powers, 34% said they would vote to stay in, 34% said they would vote to leave.

Survation found 50% saying Britain should leave the EU, 36% that they should stay. If Cameron wins back some powers, 43% of those saying Britain should leave say they would consider voting to stay.

Tonight we are due at least three polls – the monthly online ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday & Sunday Mirror, the fortnightly Opinium poll for the Observer and the weekly YouGov poll for the Sunday Times. I believe there may also be a Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday plus, of course, any ad hoc polls that newspapers have commissioned on the back of the referendum announcement in the week. We had our first poll conducted entirely after Cameron’s referendum announcement yesterday, and that didn’t show any obvious impact… but as ever, that was only one poll. We’ll have a much better idea tonight. I’ll update as the polls come in.

UPDATE: ComRes’s monthly online poll has topline figures of CON 33%(+5), LAB 39%(nc), LDEM 11%(+2), UKIP 10%(-4). Changes are from their last online poll in December. There is also an improvement in David Cameron’s own figures – 32% agreed with the statement that he was turning out to be a good Prime Minister (up 5 from a month ago), 46% disagreed (down 6).

UPDATE2: The ComRes tables are now up here. Regular readers may remember that last month ComRes changed their methodology so that when they weighted by likelihood to vote, they treated the minor parties the same as all the other parties (previously they only included BNP, Green and UKIP voters if they said they were 10/10 certain to vote, but included Tory, Lab and LD voters who were 5+/10 likely to vote, weighted proportionally). The effect was to give UKIP a hefty boost. Well, looking at this month’s tables it looks to me as if they’ve reversed the change, and gone back to only including UKIP voters who are 10/10 certain to vote. If that is the case, it would suggest a lot of the increase in UKIP’s support in ComRes’s poll last month, and their drop in support this month, is just switching methodology back and forth.

UPDATE3: By my rough, back-of-a-fag-packet reckoning, if ComRes had used the methodology they used last month they’d have shown topline figures of CON 32%, LAB 37%, LD 11%, UKIP 13% – so it would still have shown a Conservative increase, but UKIP would have suffered a smaller drop, with Labour also falling slightly.

UPDATE4: The fortnightly Opinium poll for the Observer has topline figures of CON 28%(-3), LAB 41%(nc), LDEM 8%(+1), UKIP 14%(+2). Unlike the ComRes poll, which was done between Wednesday and Friday, so wholly after Cameron’s referendum speech, the Opinium poll was done between Tuesday and Thursday and, according to the Observer, most of the fieldwork was completed before news of the speech.

UPDATE5: According to Sky the Survation poll in the Mail on Sunday has topline figures of CON 31%(+2), LAB 38%(nc), LDEM 10%(-1), UKIP 14%(-2). The movement is in the direction of the Conservatives, but the changes are all well within the margin of error. The other poll due tonight is YouGov in the Sunday Times, but that often doesn’t surface till the morning. I’ve seen mention of an Angus Reid poll in the Sunday Express too, but no idea what that shows or if it even exists.